


A Brick in the Wall

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [29]
Category: Night World - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witches, Crossover, Fusion, M/M, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:45:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any, <i>What shall we use / To fill the empty spaces / Where we used to talk?</i>" </p><p>Rodney tries to talk to John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brick in the Wall

Rodney went to visit John in the brig after the end of his shift. He brought an apple and a bottle of water just in case, but he couldn’t imagine the marines not feeding him.  
  
John was curled up in the back corner of the cell, knees pulled to his chest, head tipped back, eyes closed.  
  
Rodney reached out across the silver cord, came up against those smooth obsidian walls where once he’d have been free to roam cloudless blue skies dotted with stars.  
  
“John,” he said, “talk to me.”  
  
“You don’t believe me. You think I’m crazy.” John didn’t opened his eyes, didn’t even turn toward Rodney.  
  
“Help me believe you.”  
  
John turned his face away very deliberately.  
  
Rodney prodded those obsidian walls one more time, but they didn’t waver. He sighed and left, headed back to his own quarters.  
  
For the next few days, Rodney reached out occasionally, tested the link, but John was keeping him firmly shut out. Rodney wasn’t sure what to do, but he felt like it was the first year of the expedition all over again, feeling inexplicably drawn to John, worried about him, tuned to him. At least this time he wouldn’t have to stand in the shadows and watch Evan go to John’s bed every night.  
  
Evan. Ronon. How had it all gone so wrong?  
  
Rodney didn’t realize how out-of-sorts he was till Kusanagi brought him a handful of her red bean candies in the lab one day. He accepted them with a tired smile and a “Thank you,” and she looked ready to cry, and he realized.  
  
She’d given him some of her candy.  
  
“Look,” he said, “I’m all right. I really am.” He turned his laptop around for her to see. “Making progress on the ZPM problem, see?”  
  
Kusanagi just bowed her head and scurried away.  
  
After an awkward dinner with Teyla, during which the two of them huddled at a side table and tried not to stare at the two empty chairs at their table, Rodney needed to do...something. Blow off some steam. Get his head cleared. During the first year of the expedition, when he’d been painfully in love with John, John had been around. They’d played The Game or watched movies with the rest of the team. It hadn’t been just Rodney since...Antarctica.  
  
The gene carriers had, under Teyla direction, started regular group meditation sessions so they could work on their magic. The number of fire drills had gone down, for which Rodney was grateful, but the expedition was still going through candles at an alarming rate.  
  
Carson had an arrangement with Dr. Sofia for her to carry on his work on the Hoffan drug offworld while Carson stuck around to supervise the learning of witchcraft on Atlantis (he called it _bloody madness_ ). Rodney sometimes went to the group meditation sessions, but between the dull ache of the silver cord and the tension around the city in general, he found it difficult to relax and clear his mind.  
  
Rodney headed for the infirmary, where he found Carson sighing over yet another marine with a burn injury. Not just any other marine. Stevens, Evan’s former XO, now leader of his own team.  
  
“You know,” Carson was saying, “while John was right, that flame is the first and oldest and theoretically simplest skill to learn, we might be well-served to have some of you work on creating water. That’s also a useful skill in the field, and maybe you could put out your own fires.”  
  
“But aren’t we supposed to be able to put the fire out with our minds too?”  
  
“Yes, well, it’s difficult to remain calm and focused when your candle is going up in flames, isn’t it?” Carson reached out, and Rodney watched, awed, as he poured energy into Stevens’s wound, helping it heal faster. “Now keep it clean, change the dressing regularly, and come back here if anything seems amiss.”  
  
“Sure thing, Doc.” Stevens held obediently still while Carson rubbed burn cream on his arm and bandaged it. “How long have you been learning magic?”  
  
“All my life,” Carson said. “All young witches are capable of accidental magic, usually connected to emotional outbursts. Your father taught you to use a BB gun when you were, what, eight?”  
  
“Five.”  
  
“And my mother and grandmother and aunts taught me to light a candle for myself when I was five.”  
  
“Is it that weird? That the Major could do magic too?” Stevens lowered his voice.

“Weird isn’t quite the word for it,” Carson said. “Imagine Adolf Hitler with the powers of Zeus and Poseidon combined.”  
  
“But Major Lorne -”  
  
“I know. He’s not like that. But his ancestors were. Ruled Earth with an iron fist and unspeakable cruelty and greed. Treated humans like cattle. Slaughtered them wholesale for fun as much as for food. Worse than the Wraith.”  
  
“Why is Colonel Sheppard acting like he’s so dangerous then?”  
  
“As much as it pains me to admit it, his reaction isn’t uncommon,” Carson said. “Not among vampires, and certainly not among witches.”  
  
“You don’t agree with him.”  
  
“I don’t. But many other of our kind would have killed Evan outright, no questions asked. John was at least willing to have the matter heard before a Council. I think. Or he might have wanted to take Evan back to Earth for interrogation, to find out if there are others like him before killing him.”  
  
“I didn’t peg Colonel Sheppard as the type to hold to old tradition. I mean - he’s Sheppard. Look at his hair. Something else has to be going on.”  
  
“I agree, but I’ve no clue what it is, and he won’t speak to anyone.”  
  
“Not even to McKay?”  
  
_Not even to me,_ Rodney thought, and turned away, headed back to his own room. Halfway there he veered off course and went to speak to the Archivist. The base had acquired a bunch of common-use items, like knitting needles and crochet hooks (they traded with local planets for yarn) and books and movies and music and, most recently, musical instruments. The little electric keyboard didn’t hold a candle to the beautiful grand piano Rodney had played growing up (and then his grandmother had died and his piano teacher had brow-beaten his concert pianist dreams out of him), but it was better than nothing.  
  
Scales and arpeggios were soothing. Rodney didn’t have to think about them too hard - even after all these years, his muscles remembered. Like they remembered the cheesy pop songs he’d learned to play for Jeannie, and the classical songs he’d learned to play for recitals.  
  
Could he still play by ear, now that he had no sheet music?  
  
He knew one of John’s favorite songs by Johnny Cash was Hurt. The Johnny Cash version had a piano part, didn’t it? Rodney hummed to himself, tested a few chords. Then he began to play.  
  
As he played, he reached out, one last time.  
  
_John. Talk to me?_  
  
The obsidian wall was as tall and imposing as ever. Rodney reached out, felt for a crack or the place where the silver cord went in or -  
  
_Death. Fire. Screams. Earth shaking. Lightning hurling down from the sky. Tidal waves chasing fleeing humans as they ran and stumbled and fell and were swallowed down by the endless blue. Volcanoes hurling burning death into the air. More screams. Snarling beasts - wolves, lions, tigers, bears, megafauna, something that looked like a damn T-rex but was actually breathing fire. They chased humans and pounced on them and tore into them and there was blood and gore and gleaming white bones.  
  
A group of women banded together, hands cupped, hurling what looked like streams of white-gold plasma at one of the T-rexes. They were swept aside in a shower of blood and a shrieking of claws.  
  
Rodney was - small. Terrified. Running. Searching searching searching. Mama. Mama!  
  
“Come, Maya my child.”  
  
Mama had golden hair and warm brown eyes.  
  
“Maya, I need you to use your magic. You must -”  
  
“Mama, where is Hellewise?”  
  
Sister. Gone. Stampeding. Where. What -?_  
  
Rodney tumbled off the chair with a cry and almost toppled the keyboard with him. He managed to right it with shaking hands. What the hell had just happened? He'd been sucked into someone's awful memories. Not John. The girl's. Maya's. She'd given them to John, and he was reliving them. Dreaming them.  
  
Rodney reached out to John again. _John, talk to me!_  
  
The obsidian wall was cracked in sections, shattered in others, and beyond it Rodney could see roiling skies. Could see -  
  
_Mom, sprawled on the ground, a massive black jaguar standing on her, jaws dripping with blood and saliva. Mom wasn’t moving._  
  
_She wasn’t moving._  
  
_He tried to crawl toward her, but the stake in his back was sharp, was burning, he couldn’t breathe, he could taste blood in his mouth._  
  
_“Mama!”_  
  
_“Shut him up,” one of the women said._  
  
_Someone grabbed him by the ankle and yanked him backwards, clamped a hand over his mouth._

_“C’mon, Xander,” another woman said, and the jaguar leaped, shimmered quicksilver in midair, and was a man. A man with a familiar jawline and dark hair and blue eyes and dimples to go with his wicked grin._

(No. Not familiar to John, because there were his memories. But the man was familiar to Rodney. Oh, John.)  
  
_The man cupped his hands, and there it was again, that white-gold plasma, buiding and crackling in his palms. Xander stretched out his hands, and the plasma leaped forward, hit Mom._  
  
_He screamed behind the hand over his mouth, tears streaming down his face._  
  
_Mama!_  
  
_Around him, blue energy began to build, the magic he’d never touched, because he was lamia, not hearth-child._  
  
_“So it’s true,” Xander said. “‘One from the Day World where two eyes are watching.’ One of the Wild Powers is a half-breed.” He raised his hands again._  
  
_“No, we have to bring him to the others, give him to the dragon when he wakes,” the woman said. “Now quick, leave a couple of stakes. It needs to look like hunters did this. It -” She rocked forward, blood spilling from her lips._  
  
_A silver arrow protruded from her chest._  
  
_The vampires who leaped into the fray were beautiful, fast, and deadly. They moved too fast for human eyes to see, and he was fading. He was fading._  
  
_Mama…_  
  
_“Johnny. Oh, John, what have they done to you?”_  
  
_He struggled to keep his eyes open. “Dave?”_  
  
_“Dad! Grandma! Get over here!”_  
  
_Cool hands pressed against his fevered skin. They’d killed Mama. He’d tried to use his magic, but he wasn’t strong enough. He was too weak. He was -_  
  
_“Grandma, don’t burden him with this.”_  
  
_“Patrick -”_  
  
_“Please.”_  
  
_“All right.” And then Grandma pressed a hand to his forehead, and everything felt beautifully, blessedly cool._  
  
_And the world went dark._  
  
_When the world became light again, he was lying in his bed, staring at his own ceiling. Out with Mom. Attacked by hunters. Saved by some Redfern cousins._  
  
_“Son.” Dad sat down beside him on the bed, smoothed a hand over his forehead. “How are you feeling?”_  
  
_“I’m sorry, Dad. I couldn’t save Mom. I was too weak. I -”_  
  
_“It’s not your fault,” Dad said gently. Then his tone hardened, and he said, “Look at me.”_  
  
_Dad’s eyes blazed violet, like when he was casting magic._  
  
_“There are only two things you need to remember about this day, son: hunters killed your mother, and any shapeshifter with magic must be put down immediately.”_  
  
_“Two things. Right. But Dad...what about the blue fire?”_  
  
_“There was no blue fire, son.”_  
  
_“So I’m not a Wild Power?”_  
  
_“No, son.”_  
  
_“Okay.”_  
  
_“I love you, Johnny.” Dad leaned down and kissed him. He hadn’t had a kiss from Dad since he was really little. It was nice, and it was making him feel sleepy all over again. “Now I’m sorry, son, but this is going to hurt.”_  
  
_And then it hit. The thirst._

Rodney came out of the shared vision abruptly, chest heaving. What the hell?  
  
_John! What the hell?_  
  
Only John was awake, and the obsidian walls were as high and impenetrable as ever.  
  
Rodney, hands shaking, pushed himself to his feet. Fine. He’d get to the bottom of this, with or without John’s help. He headed for the infirmary, hoping Carson was still awake. As he walked, he started to build a wall around his mind, brick by brick.

**Author's Note:**

> Prophecy text from the Night World books.


End file.
